Friday, August 24, 2012

These are hairs we're splitting, but they're important ones. - via Ewan about half way through comments - here

would like to split some more - without spending time on simply splitting hairs.
coming from a crazy corner via Krishnamurti - partial freedom is no freedom.
and coming from a great deal of ignorance.
but i'm not seeing the value of hammering these definitions.
i'm wondering if the prep we keep doing - by hammering the definitions, then doing the pd, et al, is keeping us from what Bowen Lee talks about here (on ttt when the topic was 3rd space) at:

22:09 - that was wehre the familiarity stopped
22:51 - the most profound thing
23:30 - learning more than teaching
24:00 - what was unfamiliar to me - were the jewels i brought home
32:25 - adjusting to this level of uncertainty

are we missing the vulnerability in context that Mary Catherine Bateson describes, because we are so busy prepping for everything.
perhaps - our pd is simply in doing. and while we're doing, we're listening deeply to emerging curiosities..

Wiggins and mCtighe state "Although teaching for understanding is a vital aim in schooling, it is just one of the many. There are cases when 'understanding' is neither feasible nor desirable. The developmental level of students will determine the extent to which conceptualization is appropriate; at other times, it will make in-depth understanding a lesser or tangential goal

hmm. not following.. unless we are agreeing that curriculum is our driver.

In Design Thinking, the teacher avoids asking a question at all, and comes up with what we call a generative topic (from David Perkins' work), a curiosity-mongering statement that opens up an area of study, doesn't narrow it down. The questions that come from this investigation are the ones that students will go on to look at in more detail, come with ideas around solving or presenting.

would love to know more about this:

A large part of our work with educators is working on how to develop higher order questioning skills in students. So many Design Thinking projects we observe elsewhere at the moment are based around relatively lower order questions, or on just school/community improvement. Design Thinking can be so much more than this, but it takes the marriage between Design Thinking as a creative industries process and the best educational research we can find. It's hard to find people teaching Shakespeare, religious studies or mathematics through the process, the very things we're seeing educators through our work begin to achieve. Core to raising that ambition is raising the quality of questioning in both teachers and students, something that remains untouched in most schools.

those examples are ideo - no? so pushing self back? which is cool - just am afraid i'm missing something..
also curious why we think we need people to be teaching .. whatever shakespeare, math.. et al..
perhaps if we - again - are less on prep - and teaching - more will be learned/created/explored.

so - there is where i'm splitting hairs...
from our experience..that does make a difference, not only in how amazing something can be, but also if it continues.. or if it's finished once the achievement is seen.

and the biggest hair - that we're not getting out of the classroom more, physically and mentally.
seems we go to classrooms more to garner proof of something, then out of love for something..

just my crazy brain spilling...

totally agree with the dangers of this (whatever title is creating it):

UbD almost tries to give students the impression they have choice, responsibility for their learning, real things to create in order to learn, but in fact, it fails to respect the choices learners make, as tangents are a) less likely to appear (the immersion phease of research at the beginning is narrower by design) and b) less likely to be given time and resource by the teacher when they do appear (such tangents are off the goal that the teacher has already set in mind).

spaces of permission with nothing to prove... so that you become your own start up - your own driver..
the way we get people getting to their own 10,000 and/or happiness

hello.

you blog holds my latest finds/thoughts/ramblings. not intended for normal edu-blogger consumption or modeling.lookdirectly below for our collection of more orderly-random (chaordic) thinking... if you are so inclined...